Toby, the ASL dog!

What our friends above are gesturing is American Sign Language (ASL) for "Good Dog". Why is this important? Because tonight at the park we met a dog who's name was Toby and his owners were deaf.

Toby (spelt in the letters to the left T-O-B-Y), who was a 7 month old Cockapoo, was at the park when we pulled up. His owner, who mom and dad had also seen last night at the park, signed that she was going to leave Toby to play while she ran home and got her older sister to help communicate. We had so much fun running and playing with Toby while mom and dad seemed to have a great conversation with the older sister.

Toby would run and chase me while I ran as fast as I could after my ball. Sister was walking around doing her usual sniffing and marking of the park and then even she got in the game and chased me, then chased Toby, then he turned the tables and chased her.  He had fun, and he made sure he told us so. He barked and bark and barked, then we chimed in and had the 3 Dog Barking Trio (we're thinking that's a good name for our acappella group)


Mom and Dad want to learn basic ASL so they can communicate next time we see them their, which we hope is real soon!

All in a Dog Day at work!

As you all know, we've been coming to work with Mom for sometime now. Well we thought we'd share what its like to be an EMS dog!

#1 After you get to work you GOTTA check out your bags, equipment, and ambulance to make sure its all in good working order.



Let's see.. IV bags..Check. Intubation...Check..Bio can..Check. Monitor batteries...Check. Yup..all here!





#2 Next thing you do is scrub yesterday's bugs off. Who wants to see a dirty ambulance rolling down the street? Nobody! That's who! We scrubbed those bugs real good!

Scrub scrub here, scrub scrub there, and a couple of tra-la-las! That's how we wash our daily rig in the merry ol' land of work.

#3 Perhaps the most IMPORTANT part of any EMS job... the safety nap. You have to make sure you're well rested for whatever the system throws your way.

EMS: Earn Money Sleeping (aka) Safety Nap

#4 And last but not least, you have to make sure you get your exercise in. In this line of work you have to be fit as a fiddle (I never did understand that expression..why not fit as a Greyhound? I mean, have you seen the muscles on those things?!) We like to run laps around the station for our workout.

Fit as a Greyhound, not a fiddle.

So that's what its like for us as EMS dogs. We might not run calls with mom, but we hold down the station when she's gone. We earn our keep around these parts. At the end of the day we are dog tired and ready to hit our rack for lights out. We sure hope you enjoyed the little glimpse at a working dogs life!

Fun day hiking

Time to kick it into 4-Paw Drive

Wow! Did we have a fun day! We knew we were going some place extra fun when mom busted out the bear bells, that ALWAYS means somewhere deep in the woods. And sure enough, we drove about 5 miles off road and mom put the harness with bear bells on us and off we went! Our 4-paw drive adventure today included everything from hiking steep hills, to swimming across creeks along side mom and dad.

Follow me, I know the way.



Some of the creek crossing were so deep for us, that we had to swim. The current was strong and the water cold...but we made it to the other side time and time again. We both has such a great time that we can't WAIT to go out again.

Can I take a nap here?